History of oil drilling

Авторы: А.В. Епихин

ассистент
кафедры бурения скважин,
О.С. Ульянова
доцент кафедры ИЯПР

Томск-2015 г.
 History of oil drilling

Oil well drilling technology has evolved from the ancient

spring pole to percussion cable-tools to the modern rotary
rigs that can drill miles into the earth.
 History of oil drilling
The Chinese drilled with bamboo
spring poles as early as 450 A.D.
Drilling or “making hole” began
long before oil or natural gas were
anything more than flammable
curiosities found seeping from the
ground.
For centuries, digging by hand or
shovel was the best technologies
that existed to pry into the earth’s
secrets. Oil seeps provided a balm
for injuries. Natural gas seeps –
when ignited – created folklore
and places called “burning
springs”.
 History of oil drilling

Standard cable-tool derricks stood 82 feet tall and were powered by a steam boiler
and engine using a “walking beam” to alternately raise and lower drilling tools –
which frequently had to be sharpened in a forge. Image from The Oil-Well Driller,
1905.
 History of oil drilling
Drilling technology advanced when the spring pole harnessed the resiliency of
a bent tree to assist in pummeling a hole into the ground to find water. Ancient
histories record the technique, which is still used in some corners of the world.

While repeatedly kicking down a stirrup was primitive and slow, the spring
pole’s rope and chisel were practical drilling technologies.

In 1802 in what is now West Virginia, salt brine drillers David and Joseph
Ruffner took 18 months to drill through 40 feet of bedrock to a total depth of 58
feet using a spring pole.

The Ruffner brothers drilling ingenuity and innovation made the Kanawha
River Valley a major salt manufacturing and distribution center in the early
1800s.

Many early drilling technologies were developed there.

 History of oil drilling
“The Ruffner brothers’ well was the first well
known to have been ‘drilled,’ as distinct from
‘dug,’ in the Western Hemisphere,” notes J.E.
Brantly in the History of Oil Well Drilling.

The well’s historic significance rests on the

“development of well drilling tools and
practices, which became almost immediately
standard equipment used by many other well
drillers in the new salt industry.”
There was money to be made from brine wells.
The rapidly growing number of settlers in the
frontier needed a lot of salt to preserve food.
However, sometimes a good well would be
fouled with the intrusion of unsought and The Ruffner brothers’ tools for
unwanted oil. The rainbow sheen and pungent their spring pole probably
smell of oil was bad news to brine drillers. consisted of a manila line —
and a variety of chisels.
 History of oil drilling
The advent of cable-tool drilling introduced the wooden derrick into the
changing American landscape. Using the same basic notion of chiseling a
hole deeper and deeper into the earth.

However, adding the miracle of steam power and clever mechanical

engineering, wells could be drilled far more efficiently.

Frequent stops were needed to remove the chipped-away rock and other
material, bail out water – and sharpen the bit. Bull wheels and hemp rope
repeatedly hoisted and dropped heavy iron drill strings and a curious
variety of bits deep into the borehole.
 History of oil drilling
Oil was still an adversary to those in
search of either fresh water or brine.
However, savvy businessmen like the
Ruffner brothers and Samuel Kier of
Tarentum, Pennsylvania, learned to
profit from this oil.

It had long been recognized that oil

could be collected and used as a
medicine, lubricant, and even a foul-
smelling, smoky illuminant. American
Indians gathered oil by using blankets to
soak it up from natural seeps. The
Ruffner brothers sold their oil to
marketers of patent medicines and
lubrication products. A Howard Hughes Sr. 1909 drill bit patent
will “create the cornerstone of Hughes
Tool Company.”
 History of oil drilling
A decade before the birth of
the petroleum industry,
Samuel Kier of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, sold 50-cent,
half-pint bottles of
Pennsylvania “Rock Oil”
proclaiming its “Wonderful
Medical Virtues.”
Kier’s advertisements Oil from natural seeps had been used as a
featured wooden cable-tool balm by Native Americans. In 1848, Samuel
Kier bottled and sold “Rock Oil” proclaiming
derricks drilling brine wells.
its “Wonderful Medical Virtues.”
When a Yale chemist,
Benjamin Silliman, found
that oil could be distilled into
a kerosene illuminant, the
world changed forever.
 History of oil drilling
Inspired entrepreneurs formed the Pennsylvania
Rock Oil Company with the idea of using cable
tool drilling to extract oil they hoped to find near
Pennsylvania’s known oil seeps at Oil Creek near
Titusville. It worked, and the petroleum age was
born.

Kier soon abandoned his patent medicine and

went into the kerosene refining business, buying
all the oil he could get.

Benjamin Silliman, Jr. c.

1865
 History of oil drilling
Edwin L. Drake’s August 27, 1859, discovery of commercial quantities of oil
at 69. 5 feet brought America’s first drilling boom — and virtually created
an industry. Soon, cable-tool rigs were everywhere, pounding into the
earth, searching for oil. In June 1860, J.C. Rathbone used a steam engine to
power a rig and produced a 100-barrel-per-day producer at 140 feet in what
is now West Virginia.

In Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, the soft soil yielded to cable-tool
drilling. But as wells got deeper, some drilling experts found resistant rock
strata that made progress far more difficult. Sometimes the drilling stools
got stuck threatening the well
 History of oil drilling
A new technology answered the
call of necessity and the lure of
opportunity. Rotary drilling is
most often associated with the
spectacular 1901 Spindletop Hill
discovery near Beaumont, Texas.

Instead of the repetitive lift and

drop of heavy cable-tool bits,
rotary drilling introduced the
hollow drill stem that enabled
broken rock debris to be washed
out of the borehole with re-
circulated mud while the rotating Rotary drilling introduced the hollow drill
drill bit cut deeper. stem that enabled broken rock debris to be
washed out of the borehole.
 History of oil drilling
Howard Hughes Sr. of Houston, Texas,
receives a patent in 1909 for a drill that
“relates to boring drills, and particularly
to roller drills such as are used for
drilling holes in earth and rock.”
History of oil drilling

Howard Hughes Jr. will greatly expand the petroleum service

company fortune created by his father, who paid $150 for the
rights to the roller bit.
Thank you for your attention